SUMMARY OF THE CLOSING PLENARY SESSION OF THE 41ST INMM ANNUAL MEETING

This year for the first time, the technical program of the Annual Meeting extended over four full days. The closing plenary, organized by the Government-Industry Liaison Committee, was held on Thursday, July 20. GILC planned the closing plenary to address important issues in nuclear materials management, safeguards, and nonproliferation from perspectives not covered in the regular technical sessions. This year, two subjects of current interest were selected: initiatives to enhance security, especially information security, at U.S. Department of Energy laboratories and the impact on international collaborative programs; and the Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference that concluded in May. Security-related events at Los Alamos National Laboratory had received wide public and international attention during the preceding year. These events drew attention to the competing needs for more effective security and management of sensitive information, on the one hand, and professional contacts and the effective flow of information in international collaborative projects, on the other. Such projects are essential for progress in global management of nuclear materials, arms control and nonproliferation, and scientific research, in general. Eugene Habiger, the U.S. Department of Energy's national security czar, outlined new procedures being implemented at the DOE laboratories to effect the change in attitude that the administration considers necessary to improve security. He discussed the balance between security and international cooperation. One of the conditions for the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995 was that the nuclear weapon states enter into a comprehensive treaty to ban explosive testing of nuclear weapons. The U.S. Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that was subsequently negotiated. The first NPT review conference since its indefinite extension and since the Senate's rejection of the CTBT took place in May of this year. Michael Rosenthal, U.S. Department of State, was an active participant in the review conference and in previous review conferences. He reported that, in spite of the setback regarding the CTBT, the review conference was very successful in further strengthening the international nuclear nonproliferation regime.